


Six Pieces for Orchestra and Heart

by Nyhne



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 1900s, 1900s Vienna, Alternate Universe - Human, Arnold Schoenberg - Freeform, Forbidden Love, Historical Figures, Historical Hetalia, M/M, Romance, Second Viennese School, Secret Admirer, Skandalkonzert, composer Roderich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24283681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyhne/pseuds/Nyhne
Summary: Second Viennese School disciple Roderich gets invited by his mentor Arnold Schönberg to submit a piece to be performed at a concert in early 1900s Vienna, but as soon as he receives the good news, he loses all inspiration. Luckily, the coffee house he frequents has a new waiter fresh from Berlin, and to Roderich's headache-or perhaps good fortune-the Berliner refuses to leave him alone.Historical Hetalia piece roughly based on the Skandalkonzert of 1913. Written for the Hetabang 2020, with accompanying illustrations by the wonderful Ekinoksin on Tumblr.
Relationships: Austria/Prussia (Hetalia)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	Six Pieces for Orchestra and Heart

**1.**

The day Roderich Edelstein met Gilbert Beilschmidt, the day had already been marked with a premonition. Vienna in its waning days of summer rarely saw relief from the oppressive heat that would roll into the great boulevards of cobbled stone and gilded buildings, the high temperatures already sending its residents to the mountains to escape and leaving the unfortunate tourists who had made the ill-informed decision to visit the city in August out to bake in a growing sea of businesses closed for vacation. But on the day Roderich met Gilbert, it rained. 

The thunderstorms, just like the Augustine heat, came down upon the city in dramatics, the day first starting with an impending swirl of clouds in the sky and then the air between buildings seizing tighter and tighter before lightning broke out like a whip and a blanket of rain deluged the city. Naturally, Roderich, having paid no mind to the sky that morning, and was already running halfway late to meeting his mentor at Café Else with nothing more than a thin white shirt and trousers, was soaked.

He was not the only one to be seeking the coffee house as refuge, but he was the only one who seemed to have forgotten his umbrella, or at least a cap, and received a fair amount of pitying or disdained looks his way as he passed through the vestibule, depending on the person. A waiter might’ve snickered in his direction—Roderich wasn’t sure and couldn’t stop to be offended—as he headed to a table towards the back of the café, where Arnold Schönberg was sitting quite casually, despite the torrent outside, drinking his coffee. 

Despite the poor weather, or perhaps because of it, Café Else was crowded with customers, fine pearl necklaces and men painted as boys and artists’ smocks alike, the Viennese coffee house an ever-changing puzzle of personalities and purposes. For as long as Roderich had known the composer, he had liked meeting at the well-known café as a place of debate and study with his students, their tucked away regular’s table not so different than many of the other great movements percolating in Vienna’s stew, eager to bring change to a city of much history and tradition. 

That they would dare call themselves the Second Viennese School was scandalous for some; a thrill of change to others. Roderich did genuinely believe in what they were doing, that his mentor Schönberg was onto something that could finally give voice to all that that could not be defined; certainly there were others who did not, such as his parents, who thought it disgraceful that their well-trained son would choose to forgo his classical training and instead turn towards an unknown venture of atonality….But Roderich had committed to his decision and knew that some sacrifices had to be made, if not for the sake of art itself, then certainly for other reasons that, had his parents known of certain preferences, might not have found so savory. 

And so here he was, choosing a life of cheap, under-furnished apartments and an ever-present anxiety as to when his next meal would be easily paid for; soaked through in one of Vienna’s finest cafes with his mentor looking hardly bothered on an August afternoon. 

“I was wondering when you might arrive,” the composer said easily once Roderich had approached the table. Roderich hastily gave a little bow of his head and took a seat across from the older man, who was reading through the morning’s paper. 

“I, um, got caught in the thunderstorm,” Roderich replied. He tried with little avail to reassemble his appearance, somewhat wishing someone would hand him a towel. 

Schönberg didn’t seem particularly interested in his reason or even the state of Roderich’s clothes, having always been a man of intensity and focus, and instead cut straight to the chase, gesturing for Roderich to stop fussing, which he did, and putting down his morning paper so he could lean forward across the table and regard Roderich like a chess master watching for the next move. 

“Roderich,” he said,” I think you are ready.”

Roderich’s eyes blinked large and wide behind his wire spectacles. “Ready?” he echoed.

The older composer nodded. “Erhard Buschbeck contacted me about conducting a concert at the end of March. I want you to submit a piece to be conducted by me and performed at the Musikverein next year. You are ready,” he insisted. “I know you are.”

 _Of all things—_ Roderich knew that his mouth was open in bewilderment, still trying to connect the dots of what had just be offered to him, unassuming in its packaging, but containing all the riches of the world and more inside. 

“I—me?” he scrambled. “But I do not even have any completed pieces prepared…much less to have a full orchestra perform them.” 

Schönberg shook his head and Roderich could feel the composer’s leg already bouncing eagerly underneath the wooden table. “ _Ach_ , you are missing the point of the concert, dear Roderich. The point of this concert is not to show off old work, it is about bringing Vienna…the _world_ , if you may, into a new age of music; a new age of listening. I am not looking for work you have already done.” And as if sensing the hesitation still riding on Roderich’s lips, he added, “And I have been reading and listening to the work you have produced with me. It is good. _Very_ good. You should be proud of it.” 

Around them, the patrons of Café Else carried on like Roderich’s world hadn’t just been changed. Rags next to riches next to secrets; all possible in a city like Vienna. 

“I am proud of the progress I have made,” he tried to defend, unsure of how to meet his mentor’s steady, confident gaze. “But I am not sure if I am ready yet for an entire audience to hear—“

“—What do we make music for, if not for an audience, Roderich?” the older cut in. “They like it, they hate it; history is not made with secrets that are kept secrets forever.”

Then in one fluid motion, Schönberg was at his feet, folding up his paper and tucking it under his empty coffee cup along with a well-worn Krone note. “I’m afraid I have other business I must attend to, but I hope you will consider my offer. I would not extend this opportunity to just any of my students.”

Roderich wasn’t sure if he was supposed to find the statement comforting. He had only been studying with the at-times eccentric composer for a year, and although he found the directions Schönberg’s teachings were going exciting, there was still much uncharted territory yet to go. 

“We’ll be in touch,” Schönberg assured, before giving Roderich a slight nod and striding between the tight tables of Café Else with practiced ease. 

Just as easily, the humdrum of the coffee house resumed like the curtains of a theatre being pulled shut, Café Else’s occupants concerned with their own affairs than that of a young man dripping water all over the tiled floor. In that day and age, nobody much listened in on the private conversations of their neighboring table in golden Vienna, but some, of course, listened all too well…

“Apologies, sir, you looked like you might need this.”

And so Roderich met one Gilbert Beilschmidt, who was standing where Schönberg had just been moments before with the most self-assured look on his face Roderich had ever seen, one hand pressed to his cocked hip right above his waiter’s apron. If the young man’s rough, Berliner accent hadn’t pulled Roderich out of his thoughts, then his astonishingly intense stare served just the same, his eyes glinting an almost coppery red in the flash and twinkle of the café’s chandelier lights. 

Roderich finally moved away from the young man’s eyes down to where the blond was holding out a white towel, more like a rag, in a somewhat condescending offering for Roderich’s sorry state. His hands, not quite skeletal, were a shade of pale that almost looked sickly, so white that the pointed knuckles were bruised red like the Alps in blood. At Roderich’s lack of response, a small snicker escaped the other’s mouth, not unlike the one Roderich had heard earlier, when he first entered the café, which he had nearly forgotten about until right then…

“It took you long enough,” Roderich snipped instead, his embarrassment catching up to him and immediately getting hidden behind an air of superiority like it always did. He took the poor excuse of a towel with a huff and began using it to start patting off his clothes, what little use it did. 

“I did not want to interrupt your surely important conversation,” the server replied slyly, watching, and not doing much else to help Roderich dry himself off. “I assume your gentleman friend left,” he continued. “Cheap bastard, wasn’t he?” The same boney hand moved over to pluck the Krone off the table, examining its value with a _tsk_ and pocketing it nonetheless in his apron pocket. 

“I do not think it proper to comment on the generosity of your guests,” Roderich said, beginning to turn from startled to annoyed by the stranger’s presence and over-familiarity. 

“Ah, but we all must pay to eat and play in this fine city of yours, hmm, _Wienerblut?_ ” the other quipped back. “Or perhaps it is the Berlin in me,” he added in mock afterthought, and then winked. “I am not yet used to these delicate Viennese sensibilities.” 

Diamonds and pearls, cotton and rags…you could find it all in Vienna. “Don’t be so presumptuous,” Roderich retorted, feeling rather self-conscious then and there about his appearance. He’d never had such trouble with the staff at Café Else before—what a damper to an otherwise good bout of news. 

“Hardly presumptuous; just knowing,” the server quipped. And then, to Roderich’s complete surprise, the blond gave a sweeping, if not teasing, bow, cocky smirk to his lips even as he did so. “Gilbert Beilschmidt, at your service for the next time you should sit in my section.”

Roderich turned a nose but felt his cheeks heating up in a rosy hue, feeling very and foolishly lost, and very and justifiably annoyed at the Berliner— _Gilbert_ —in front of him. He had always thought of himself as someone who did not easily let others under his skin, always able to keep himself composed at the face of inconveniences. Fine, then let him respond in kind—

“Roderich Edelstein. And no, I do not think I will. Thank you for your services today,” he replied curtly and held the towel out for the other dismissively, who took it with some amusement, before standing again and turning heel to go back out into the rainstorm he had come from, Gilbert’s annoying little snicker following him all the way out the door.

**2.**

With the onset of fall, Vienna once more dragged itself out of the hellish bowels of summer and made itself into much more tolerable of a city, the waning hours of sunlight beginning to illuminate the city with the glimmer of false stars from restaurant patio lights and steady lampposts. 

Fall was usually Roderich’s favorite season in Vienna, but even the approaching season could not seem to pull him out of the abyss of a lack of muse. Because as soon as his mentor had made his generous proposal, Roderich had found himself all dried out of inspiration; quite humiliating in a city that thrived on being the muse for much of Europe and beyond. Schönberg, no stranger to the insanity-inducing tides of inspiration, was sympathetic, but as the leaves of the maples and elms began to change color, even he had to concede that if Roderich could not find inspiration for the concert in time, he would have to choose someone else. 

In his attempt to force his hand in composing, he’d been spending a great deal of time at Café Else, much to the sadistic delight of the server Gilbert, who seemed to work at the coffee house a great deal of hours (and had informed Roderich that because he was new to the city, and new to its rent, he needed a great deal of money). 

By the end of the first month, Roderich had already given up on trying to escape their, under his description, ‘antagonistic,’ relationship, primarily because Gilbert, only God knew why, took particular pleasure in pestering Roderich, and Roderich was yet unable to get a different waiter to service his table, as the other waiters at Café Else had decided the matter was beneath their attention and thus chose to ignore the problem as was annoyingly common amongst servers in Vienna. So, Roderich was stuck with him.

Gilbert knew about his writing predicament. Being nosey, and bold, the Berliner had made it his business to ask Roderich what he was working so hard on every day because, according to him, whatever it may be, Roderich did not seem to be getting very far on it at all. Roderich suspected the other took some kind of rude pleasure out of inquiring over it every time, just to hear that No, Roderich had not yet found his muse. 

“Are you sure your muse isn’t me?” the blond asked one day, cheekily, and with the same infuriating smirk he always wore in Roderich’s presence. Roderich’s cheeks were already turned pink, and he tried his best to ignore it.

“Quite sure,” he replied tartly.

**3.**

By the time most of the leaves had fallen from the trees, Roderich was feeling quite dire in his situation. Schönberg had given him until the winter holidays to present him with work for the concert, and Roderich was still struggling to find a muse. It was starting to affect his sleep, and with lily skin that had hardly seen much light over the summer and fall months, the bruised purple circles underneath his eyes were beginning to turn ugly. 

Roderich was on the cusp of falling asleep at his usual table in Café Else when a familiar blur of a human shape stepped up the table, black apron tied neatly around their waist. 

“Apologies, sir, but you look like you might need this,” Gilbert’s voice said, and Roderich blearily looked up from his still-blank staff paper to see the German holding out a matching pair of cigarettes. 

Roderich frowned, irritated and exhausted and confused at the gesture. “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

Gilbert simply flashed the cigarettes across Roderich’s vision again, but when Roderich looked up at the other’s face, he did not have his usual teasing looks about him. He almost looked...concerned…? “Do I need to spell it out to you, you stubborn Wiener? I’m on my break. Have a smoke with me.”

“I don’t—“ Roderich began, and then stopped himself. There was not much use for proprieties when one was at their lowest, after all. “Thank you,” he said instead, and quietly took the offering before standing up. Gilbert simply nodded and gestured for Roderich to follow him out the back of the restaurant, leading him around the bar counter and through the crowded halls of the employee-only area, past the similarly cramped kitchen where chefs were already preparing for the night’s rush of patrons. How many years had Roderich been coming to Café Else and never seen its bustling underbelly? 

“Allow me,” Gilbert said once they were outside in the back alley of the building, a northern breeze pulling the chill from the faded brick walls. Roderich leaned forward to allow the other to light the end of his cigarette, murmuring a thanks that was nodded off by the other. 

The Berliner had propped himself up against the wall, steadily adding his smoke to the grayness filling the sky. “So, _Wienerblut_ ,” he began conversationally. “How is your muse today?”

Roderich drew out a few puffs of his own cigarette before answering, the tobacco doing little to sweeten his mood on the subject. “I do not know why you ask the same question every time when you already know the answer is the same,” he said in sour reply. But it wasn’t in bitterness towards Gilbert, but himself, his own muse betraying him in a time of need.

Gilbert simply shrugged. “I ask in the hopes that one day, it will change,” he said, and as much as Roderich scrutinized it, he could not detect a single sarcastic or teasing note in the other’s tone. He wasn’t quite sure whether to be surprised anymore.

“Perhaps I should give up now,” Roderich sighed despairingly. He kept his eyes towards the sky, wishing something, a crow maybe or a warbler lost from the Danube, would appear like a sign. “If my parents were right, and this really was all for nothing, it would be better to save myself the trouble now than to carry on making myself out to be a fool.”

A rude snort came from Gilbert’s side of the wall. “If I had listened to every thing my parents said, I wouldn’t be here, and I very well might be dead. Listening to your parents will only get you somewhere if you have no desire in life, Roderich. And as much as you might paint yourself to be a ‘by the rules’ fella, I wouldn’t believe it’s true for one second.” 

“And why is that?” Roderich raised an eyebrow. 

Gilbert turned towards him with his signature smirk, his unusual-colored eyes seeming to calculate sometime just below their surface. Without answering, he reached over and plucked Roderich’s near-finished cigarette from his lips, bringing it to his own and drawing in the last inhalation of smoke with slow and deliberate ease before blowing it out like a smoke screen between them. Roderich watched him do it, the spread of warmth on his cheeks certainly more than the briskness of the weather; knowing the game but not yet sure if he wanted to play. The Berliner certainly kept his life interesting. 

“Some things I just know,” Gilbert replied. And for the first time in weeks, Roderich felt the strings of inspiration begin to pull.

**4.**

Here were the things Roderich knew in the relatively short period of his 25 years of life thus far: 

The first being that he had been born different; his weak health as an infant aside, his inclinations as a child had always been to stay quiet, not to show too much emotion, and to enjoy the delicate things life offered; by all means he had been the perfect child to raise, and his parents had been more than pleased to prime and groom their little dark-haired boy with beautiful dark blue eyes to become the musical prodigy of their dreams; to their horror, then that he began to fall under the spell of Schönberg and his experiments in atonality; to their horror, then, that there were rumors that Roderich had been caught with the neighboring Swiss family’s boy in the woods when they were teenagers…

The second being that in a world, in an empire, desperately trying to keep itself together, the question of what happens when things begin to fall apart was ever-pressing on its citizens; Roderich felt it when he left his parents’ house for the last time; he felt it every time the dual monarchy came out with another bend to Hungary’s will; he’d felt it when he kissed Basch in the Viennese woods. He’d felt it the first day he met Gilbert, and the questions had yet to stop spinning in his head. _What do you do when tonality simply falls apart?_

And the third being that Schönberg was right when he said that history was not made with secrets kept forever. And maybe Roderich was done keeping secrets.

**5.**

“—and you are certain that this is what you want to present for the night’s concert?” 

Roderich nodded. 

“I am sure.”

**6.**

Roderich had been privileged enough to attend a few concerts in the golden halls of the Musikverein back when his parents still totted him around like a performing monkey, but walking through its great doors as his own man was something else entirely. Even during the day, without its crowds of Vienna’s finest, the hall was a sight to behold, Roderich feeling like a mere speck in the grand existence of the city and its culture as he slowly traversed through the Musikverein’s winding halls and staircases. 

Change was coming in Vienna—in Europe and eventually the world; was what he was doing, enough? As he descended the grand staircase taking a break from obsessively watching over the final rehearsals that beckoned him like wicked siren call back to the Groβersaal, Roderich felt like he was being swallowed by the enormity of the moment. Here he was in the nicest black suit he owned, counting down the seconds until his heart would be revealed to the world. The warm glow of the lamps adorning the baluster should’ve felt comforting, but even they seemed cold and indifferent to his vulnerability. 

Roderich signed and returned to the concert hall. Schönberg was a tiny match on the stage, leading the orchestra through a tricky passage in the composer’s own symphony. The music sounded perfect, of course. 

But it was not the musicians on stage he was worried about, nor even the innocuous stack of concert programs sitting by the central doors waiting for their distributors in the early evening; no, his anxiety lay in the empty seats lining the floor like pews at a church, each one waiting to be filled by Vienna’s most ardent lovers of music and critics alike.

_They like it, they hate it…_

“Everything good, Herr Edelstein?”

A young man about Roderich’s age helped himself to the seat on the brunet’s right, his thick sleeper’s circles under his eyes, nearly heavier than Roderich’s own, scanning over the practicing musicians from where they viewed the hall perched in the boxes on the stage right. Roderich gave a small nod in greeting to the organizer of the evening, Herr Buschbeck, but wasn’t quite sure if he even had the words to reply to the other’s question. _Alles in Ordnung?_ Roderich was yet to find out. 

“I suppose it will remain to be seen,” he replied a bit morbidly, the music floating from the stage coming to a disjointed pause as Schönberg stopped to correct the bassoonist’s entrance. “At this point I cannot control anything that will happen—the bird has already escaped its cage and is into the world.” 

“A poet and a musician, hm?” Baschbeck chuckled before hoisting himself to standing again. “Ah, and speaking of poems, your selection of poetry for the concert program was quite…interesting. You are certainly laying all cards on the table for this, or for someone, aren’t you?” 

The same blush that had been coloring Roderich’s cheeks for the past months again made its appearance. “Ahh…” he cleared his throat hastily. “Yes, well…” he trailed off again.

Baschbeck held up his hands in a gentleman’s relent. “I am not trying to look for a scandal, Herr Edelstein. It was simply an observation. Besides, having Arnold Schönberg himself to headline the concert is already asking for trouble, eh?” 

Yes, Roderich had already heard rumors of people planning to protest the concert…he wasn’t sure which anxiety was worse. “Are you expecting trouble?” he asked.

The other man shrugged, seeming to Roderich both blasé and eager to find a fight in the evening. Roderich himself had never been in a fight in his life, and he was not quite sure if he even knew how to fight someone if the need arose. Sharpness of the tongue, he could manage, but in all other means he was rather lacking, and the closer the evening got, the more Roderich had the feeling something was brewing.

Nonetheless, Baschbeck seemed confident in his program, telling him, “I assure you, there will be far more supporters to hear your work than there will be naysayers.” 

…but as the evening’s program began and seats began to fill up, Roderich grew less and less confident in the concert organizer’s words. For as it were, the concert hall seemed divided between supporters and antagonizers, both sides shooting each other furtive glances and sly, upturned looks at whatever chance they got. It made Roderich glad for his relative obscurity, tucked away in the viewing box with a fellow student of Schönberg’s, well above the uneasy tide that brewed below. He could see the young Baschbeck scurrying back and forth across the front of the stage, sharing hushed conversations with this person or that, they, too, sending scowled glances at the Schönberg detractors while the Schönberg detractors scowled at them. 

By the time the concert was due to start, the audience was a barely contained witch’s brew, simmering under the black lid of lights being dimmed. The few assenting murmurs still whispering in the dark were quickly shushed by Schönberg fans…but for once in concert etiquette, it did little effect in silencing them. Roderich exchanged looks with Berg and sat nervous in his seat, suddenly finding himself wishing Gilbert was there. Which was silly, given that the Berliner didn’t even know that the music Roderich had been writing, all the hours spent at Café Else, all the scribbled and unscribbled notes, that it had all been—

The shrill chorus of winds started off the performance and with the introduction of Zemlinsky’s _Four Orchestral Songs_ , the evening was off. 

At the first note there was already tittering in the audience, followed by an almost equally-disruptive shushing from the other side. Roderich wasn’t sure if he should give in to his anxiety and keep at the edge of his seat, or give into his dread and sink back into the plush velvet. Next to him, Berg already was looking ill and even from their height, Roderich could see the uneasiness on Marie Freund’s face as she began to sing the first bars of the piece. The only ones who seemed steadfast in their resolution that the concert should go on as planned were Schönberg, ever a champion of tuning out the noise around him, and Baschbeck sitting in the front row of the theatre, arms crossed in a stubborn determination to enjoy himself that evening. 

It was at the third piece that the hissing began, a contentious cloud gathering above the audience. The poor musicians on stage barely seemed to get through the fourth and final in Zemlinsky’s set before the audience began to boil over in a cacophony of jeers from the antagonists, and a somewhat foolishly determined applause from Schönberg’s defenders. Schönberg himself turned briefly back to the audience to give a look of obvious contempt before returning to his musicians, again trying to posture them as if there was nothing amiss. The hissing began to evolve into shouting, but before it could escalate, Baschbeck strode angrily from his seat to the stage and, with some note of hysteria, demanded that the audience show some respect if at least for the late Gustav Mahler whose works would conclude the evening. 

“Perhaps continuing is not a wise idea…” Berg muttered, rocking slightly in his seat. 

Roderich was set to agree, but as soon as there was a lull in the audience’s displeasure, Schönberg launched into the next set of music, and for the first time, the _first time_ , Roderich heard the opening notes of his music on stage. 

In that first blissful moment, Roderich could finally understand how his mentor was able to block out everything except for the music in front of him. If he could’ve dreamed it, it felt like he was the only one on the stage, the audience gone, the orchestra gone except for one lonely violinist who started the salutation with an intrepid arpeggio. And then the winds with their entrance; and the cello and bass; and the deep bassoon singing cavernous and lonely. For one blissful moment, his cheeks tinged pink like they always did when it came to _him_ , Roderich felt happiness. 

And then the first fight of the evening broke out. 

It was hard to say who threw the first punch and who might’ve punched back, but before the orchestra could even get past three bars, the Musikverein had erupted into chaos. Next to him, Berg was clutching at his chest and gasping _Good Lord!_ while patrons abandoned any sense of sensibility or propriety, the gasps turning into shouts of indignation turning into calls of anger. Standing amongst the floor audience, Baschbeck was full in the throes of the fight, at first in his attempts to pull quarreling pairs apart, but then soon falling into quarrels himself. 

“I think it is best to go—“ Berg stood suddenly, his eyes a bit frantic, searching the squirming crowds of the Musikverein as if he had forgotten where every exit was in the building. 

Roderich quite agreed, so the two made hasty their flight from the viewing box, being careful to avoid any altercations along their way. They were not the only ones fleeing the scene—men and women in their Sunday finest were streaming from the concert hall, the ushers struggling to provide direction, much less simply stay afloat amidst the chaos. As soon as they reached the ground level, Berg turned to join the crowds pushing towards the main entrance, but Roderich hesitated in following.

“It would be better to go out the back entrance, behind the stage,” he called after the other, but his colleague was already lost in the crowd and quite suddenly Roderich was alone. He glanced uncertainly towards the stage, the front of which was looking increasingly like a boxing ring more than a place of art and culture.

_That’s him. Look, it’s the Edelstein composer. It’s him! God he looks like a— He’s the one with the poem in the programs. It’s him, and he’s—_

All around Roderich the whispers and pointing started building, ladies dressed in elegant gowns and men in their finest suits looking over him in contempt as they at first, only passed by, but then began to stay, and grow in numbers until Roderich found himself backed against the wall, surrounded by a crowd that certainly had not come to support Schönberg and his disciples at his concert that night. The salon began to again close in on him, its gilded edges and twinkling lights shining bright, too bright, and then smearing across his vision.

“P-Please—“ he tried without even knowing what he could beg for, the witch’s mob pressing closer and their expressions growing meaner, until suddenly, an all-too familiar face managed to worm its way in between Vienna’s well-to-do, out of place certainly in his plain style of dress, but more so because even in the magnificent lighting of the Musikverein, the pale skin and stunning copper eyes of Gilbert Beilschmidt stood out like godsend. 

“Roderich!” he called. Roderich couldn’t even think of anything to do but to stare stupidly at his savior’s face, the angry crowd distorting and melting away. 

But he was pulled promptly back into reality when one man suddenly grabbed his collar, demanding he explain _What kind of nonsense he was playing at_ , and all of the fear and all of the panic came flooding back in. Roderich gasped and blinked at the man with wide eyes, once again recalling that he didn’t even _know_ how to fight—

—and then Gilbert’s fist connected with the man’s jaw, and Roderich could’ve sworn, it was the most harmonious sound he’d heard the entire evening. 

“Come _on!_ ” Gilbert hissed impatiently, his eyes sweeping wildly from left to right as he pulled Roderich out of the shocked crowd and back down the aisle toward the stage. Roderich struggled to keep up with him on two left feet, scenes of the evening flashing before him as they ran through the orchestra seating. The stage had emptied out of musicians, who had fled to safety behind the curtains, but a fuming Schönberg still stood at the conductor’s podium arguing with at least three different people at the same time, Baschbeck not far off having a much more heated discussion with a Musikverein patron. 

Although Gilbert was clearly improvising as he went, Roderich had to hand it to the other that they were yet to get pulled into any of the brawls, the Berliner swiftly navigating the maze of the backstage with an almost animal-like intensity. Even Roderich wasn’t sure where they were by the time they slowed and Gilbert, having pulled them into a spare room somewhere in the deep recesses of the Musikverein, began to relax his guard, the hackles Roderich imagined on the other’s shoulders finally settling. 

“What are you doing here?” Roderich blurted out, still unable to look at the other with anything other than shock. 

The Berliner still had one eye on the door, and if he were a dog, Roderich swore his ears would’ve been cocked just as well. “I came to see your performance, clearly, _Wienerblut_.” 

Roderich stared incredulously, and then just as quickly began to feel that same warmth creeping up his cheeks and the back of his neck. _How did he know? How did he find him in the crowd? Did he know about the music? Did he know what Roderich had been trying to say?_ “But-but how did you get in?” he stammered, grasping for straws.

Gilbert waved him off almost impatiently, looking somewhat at ease like he’d practiced it all before. Hardened Berliner, arriving in opulent Vienna all those months ago with nothing but a suitcase and the clothes on his back…“I have my methods,” he said vaguely.

Outside, the madness of the concert finally seemed to be ending, the chaotic sounds of challenged duels and egregious contempt fading as it sounded like the police had finally been called to restore order, their gruff orders dominating any petty arguments over decency and indecency in the music world.

“But…but why did…” Roderich stammered, hardly even noticing the din around them. 

Gilbert changed the subject abruptly, all of a sudden looking that cocky, self-assured Berliner he was when Roderich had first met him months ago. “Those songs you wrote…and the poem, in the program. Were those about anyone, by any chance?” he asked, the blond already seeming to know his answer. 

Roderich’s haughtiness drew up on him like habit, but the deepening blush on his cheeks still remained, just barely disguised in the dark room they were hidden in. “Of course not,” he sniffed, without much belief behind even his own words.

Gilbert wasn’t fooled. “Am I your muse, _Wienerblut?_ ” he teased. 

The corner of Roderich’s mouth twitched, and finally the anxiety began releasing him from its hold, and he knew exactly where he was and who and what and when. “What if I answer yes?” he said.

“Then you should tell me again that you are sure,” Gilbert winked.

Roderich smiled, shyly, but just for them.

“Quite sure.”

END

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 **A/N:** The fic is closely-and-not-so-closely based on the 1913 “Skandalkonzert” that happened in Vienna, wherein fights broke out in Vienna’s famed Musikverein during a concert of Arnold Schönberg and his disciples of the Second Viennese School, a group of musicians who wanted to push the envelope on tonality. The persons mentioned in the fic outside of Roderich and Gilbert are all real, though fictionalized and some orders of events skewed; Roderich is somewhat standing in for Anton Webern and the fic is somewhat named after the pieces he premiered at the Skandalkonzert, _Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6._ Poor Alban Berg is actually the composer whose work incited the most protest due to its inspiration from Peter Altenberg’s provocative poems, which were printed in the program; and Erhard Buschbeck was the one who supposedly docked someone in the face so hard, the most famous quote to emerge from the chaos was that it _war noch das Melodiöseste, das man an diesem Abend zu hören bekam._ In other words, that it was the most harmonious sound heard that evening. Please make sure you see the amazing accompanying illustrations to the fic by the lovely Ekinoskin@tumblr!!

Getting back into writing and fics is always a bit rusty, but I hope folks enjoy this little piece, the first piece I've posted in nearly three years haha. Thanks all!


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